Part 6 — TOBACCO AND THE CIGARETTE PART FIVE—SPIRITUAL EFFECTS

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

“If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”—Paul.

Yet professed Christians, and even ministers of the gospel, will saturate themselves with the filthy weed tobacco in some of its forms, filling their blood with the nicotin poison until a leech placed upon the arm will fall dead inside of sixty seconds.

No one can so debase and deaden his physical system without impairing his mental powers. When the mental powers are thus degraded, and the faculties so impaired, just to that extent is the power to give God “reasonable service” destroyed.

Of course it is to professed Christian tobacco users that this chapter is presented. And to them we will say that their evil example is the argument behind which boy and men tobacco users hide, and by which they defend their use of the weed. Tens of thousands of boys are going to ruin physically, mentally, and morally because of the evil example of professed Christians, prominent educators, and physicians.

A Clean Ministry

“Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.”—Isaiah.

A prominent church man once related the following experience:—

“I used to use tobacco. When I gave it up I had a hard time for ten weeks. I was unable to sleep at night, would walk the floor, but God gave me victory.”

Josiah Strong, in his “Challenge for the Churches” (page 267), does some interesting figuring. He says:—

“There are 20,000,000 Protestant church members in the United States. About one-third of them are males. Assuming that only one-half of the male membership are smokers (and we are afraid it is a very generous supposition), there are 3,333,000 in that class. On the supposition that each smoke only three five-cent cigars a day, they together spend $500,000 daily for tobacco.”

How the Deacon Took the Tobacco Cure

An evangelist conducting a revival service in Marietta, Ohio, relates the following incident:—

One of the deacons of the church, a very earnest man, was addicted to the use of tobacco. He was teacher of a large class of young ladies, and was very anxious that they should all be brought to Christ before the meeting closed. At the beginning of the series of services he brought me a list of the unconverted ones, and requested that I should pray and work for their conversion. We had a short talk concerning his class, and he seemed worried about his influence with them. As the week wore on and none of them were converted, he became more and more uneasy.

On Sunday morning he came to me with tears in his eyes and said he was going to make a confession to the class. I asked him what it was, and he replied: “I have been a slave to tobacco. I can not stand before these girls and plead with them to accept Christ with the taste of that vile stuff in my mouth. I promised God I would stop it last night. This morning when the appetite for it came on, the devil told me I couldn’t. I am going to tell the girls about it this morning and ask them to pray for me.”

When the Sunday-school hour was about half over I looked into his class room. All the heads were bowed in prayer, and most of the girls had their handkerchiefs to their faces, and were crying. As I closed the door softly I heard one of them praying, “Dear Jesus, cure our teacher.”

You wouldn’t have known that class of girls when they came out of the class room that day. Their indifference seemed to be all gone. The deacon followed them into the auditorium, and there he met his partner in the grocery store.

“John,” he said, his face all aglow, “I’ve taken the tobacco cure.”

“What is it?” asked his partner.

“I won’t tell you now, John; but if it cures me will you take it too?”

“Sure,” replied the partner.

“Shake hands on it,” said the deacon.

They clasped hands, and in a few weeks afterward the deacon kept him to his word.

The deacon’s tobacco cure was the inspiration of the meeting. Inside of three weeks every girl in that class had accepted Christ, and they didn’t stop at that, either. Many others were brought to Christ through their efforts. And so the deacon’s tobacco cure became “the cure of souls.”—Stephen J. Corey, in the Christian Endeavor World.

An Appeal to Christians.

But what can be done to teach children and youth the evils of a practice of which parents, teachers, and ministers set them the example? Little boys hardly emerged from babyhood may be seen smoking their Cigarettes. If one speaks to them about it they say, “My father uses tobacco.” They point to the minister or the Sunday-school superintendent, and say, “Such a man smokes; what harm for me to do as he does?” Many workers in the temperance cause use tobacco. What power can such persons have to stay the progress of intemperance?

I appeal to those who profess to believe and obey the Word of God: Can you as a Christian indulge in a habit that is paralyzing your intellect, and robbing you of power rightly to estimate eternal realities? Can you consent daily to rob God of service which is his due, and to rob your fellow men, both of service you might render, and of the power of example?

Have you considered your responsibilities as God’s stewards for the means in your hands? How much of the Lord’s money do you spend for tobacco? Reckon up what you have thus spent during your lifetime. How does the amount consumed by this defiling lust compare with what you have given for the relief of the poor and the spread of the gospel?

No human being needs tobacco, but multitudes are perishing for want of the means that by its use is worse than wasted.—Ministry of Healing.